CAPSULE REVIEW : ABT Stages Birthday ‘Offering’ but No Party

This, in case you’ve been out of the country, is the 50th anniversary season of American Ballet Theatre.

New York celebrated the momentous occasion in January with a nostalgic, star-clotted, gala orgy of variety acts. Unsentimental Los Angeles, embroiled in a booking dispute with ABT management, allowed the local visit to be canceled. As far as Southern California is concerned, Orange County was left to hold the festive torch.

Orange County, however, chose to let the torch flicker. The annual season opened at Segerstrom Hall on Tuesday night with no fuss, little muss.

At first glance, the curtain raiser looked specifically festive. After all, it was entitled “Birthday Offering.” But the birthday in question turned out to be the 25th anniversary of the Sadler’s Wells (soon to be Royal) Ballet in London.

Mikhail Baryshnikov may have abandoned the company last fall in a regrettably hasty huff. Nevertheless, he has left his successors a roster of well-schooled, disciplined yet fascinatingly dissimilar dancers. His legacy also includes at least one choreographer of exceptional sensitivity, musicality and wit: Clark Tippet. “Some Assembly Required,” first performed in Washington last April, turns out to be a perky and quirky little duet.

The other half of the program--the reheated half--proved less satisfying. The latest revival of Antony Tudor’s “Jardin aux Lilas” looked dutiful rather than inspired.

Finally, to bring down the house with push-button certainty came “Push Comes to Shove.” Alas, Twyla Tharp’s delirious dissection of jazzy pop and Russian pomp has not aged well.

It looked so fresh, so effortless, so funny, so marvelously irreverent in 1976. It looked so tired, so quaint, so forced, so mechanical on Tuesday.

A full review runs in Thursday’s Calendar.